Burnell was in the Olympic medal mix at the end of the 10km race but was denied in the frantic finale by the narrowest of margins, and appeared to have finished fifth. The Dutch swimmer Ferry Weertman won gold in 1hr 52min 59.8sec, with Greece’s Spiros Gianniotis recording the same time but clearly finishing behind the Dutchman.

Burnell was one of three swimmers finishing in 1hr 53min 02sec, but France’s Marc-Antoine Olivier and Zu Lijun of China shared bronze and Burnell was determined to have finished fifth after officials studied the photo finish. He later revealed he had been disqualified for making unnecessary contact with other swimmers.

“This is the pinnacle of our sport, the Olympic Games,” a frustrated Burnell told the BBC after the race. “It’s supposed to be the grandest stage of them all with everything perfect, all this great scenery, and the one thing that ruins it is the referees. There’s 600 or however many boats out there, a ridiculous amount of boats – not needed – and every single person on the boat has no idea what they’re doing.

“They’re giving yellow cards out left, right and centre for absolutely nothing, and then disqualifying people 2m from the end when there’s people grabbing hold of legs and everything. The whole thing was ridiculous, an absolute joke.

“In the end apparently I was disqualified, about 2m from finish. The first yellow card I got was coming down the straight back here – I was second, there was nobody either side of me, and the guy pulls out a yellow card! I couldn’t have physically touched anybody. The yellow card there is meant to be for unnecessary contact. What do you want me to do? I just shook my head at the guy.”